Africa

We take cover after running into some elephants. Photos by David Lansing.

I must be crazy because running into these elephants in the cloud forest at Lake Paradise didn’t scare me. In fact, what I wanted to do was just stand there and look at them and wait for them to decide what to do. But Calvin has been charged by elephants. Calvin has had a client stomped by an elephant. And Calvin was not going to let us stay where we were.

Using hand signals, he motioned for us to get off the elephant trail and slowly go back the way we came. We stepped as lightly as we could, aware of every crunch and snap, listening like dogs on alert for the crack of a split tree that would be our signal that an elephant was coming after us. And if we had heard a trumpet and the smashing of trees, what were we to do? I had no idea.

We got off the elephant trail and back to where the Land Cruiser was stuck behind the log and Calvin signaled for us to get down on the ground and silently wait. The elephant trail was maybe twenty feet to our right and he figured that eventually they’d come down that way. He had the safety off his Rigby .500 and had the gun sitting on his lap. And so we waited.

This baboon was waiting to see what happened when the elephants found us.

It’s amazing how much better your hearing is in a situation like this. All your senses really. I could smell the elephants and hear the buzz of forest bees and then I saw just the slightest movement, deep in the woods to my right, and my heart raced, the blood pounding in my ears. But it wasn’t an elephant. It was a young baboon, sitting on the root of an old fig tree, watching us. He looked like a child sitting on a fence by the side of the road where an accident has just occurred, not quite part of the activity but not completely outside of it either. No doubt he knew where the elephants were and he had a good view of us sitting in the forest and now he was just going to hang around to see what happened next.

We sat there for quite some time and then Calvin went off on his own into the forest. We could see him slowly moving up the elephant trail, crouched over, his loaded Rigby pointed in front of him. He got almost up to where we had first seen the elephants and then he stopped and just stood still in the forest, listening. When he came back he told us that the elephants had either gone back the way they came or, more likely, had detoured around us.

“They’re wary of humans up here,” he said. “Probably they chose to escape rather than confront us. Just as well.”

We waited another few minutes, just to make sure, but there were no more sounds in the forest. Even the baboon had moved on. So we did as well.

This is what happens when you look for a shortcut through the woods at Lake Paradise. Photo by Chris Fletcher.

The plan was to drive down off the mountain and into one of the villages around Marsabit to check out the local culture. When we’d met the head warden of Marsabit, Robert Obrien, he’d told us that the tribes in this area—Rendille, Borana, Gabbra, Turkana—are fascinating and worth a visit.

“When the road comes (the one the Chinese are building) it will bring tourism to this area for the first time,” he told us. “I don’t want tourists to come for the animals. I want them to come for the culture. The culture is unique. The thing is the cultures of the people.”

And then he told us of a couple of villages that we might go to. So that was the plan. But in Kenya plans are meaningless. We planned for the KW (Kenya Wildlife) to bring us water because we were running low and they did; but they brought the water in used petrol barrels and we couldn’t use it. We planned to restock on Tusker in Marsabit but there was none to be had. That’s the way it is in Africa.

Rather than take the same road down the mountain that we’d taken to get here, Calvin decided that it would be quicker to try the trail to the north. You would think by now that we would know better than to look for shortcuts (particularly considering that it was Martin Johnson looking for a shortcut to Lake Paradise that started all the problems with Calvin’s great-uncle Bud), but we have not learned that lesson.

The track was narrow and overgrown. Hardy and Fletch and Pedro sat on the roof of the Land Cruiser, giving Calvin instructions on how to avoid a fallen log or a large bush that seemed to block the trail. Sometimes we’d stop the car and all get out and evaluate the situation and Pedro would take his Swiss Army knife which had a 3-inch serrated blade on it and hack away at some sapling or a branch. Then Calvin would push into the growth like a rhino charging through the bundu and miraculously make it through. It was cool and moist in the forest and smelled of decay and greenery and, once in awhile, of fresh dung. The webs of golden orb spiders were everywhere and every few minutes one of the boys sitting on the roof of the vehicle would shout and Calvin would stop the car and we’d all watch Fletcher or Hardy try to brush away the long-legged creepy crawly that had fallen on their hat or their shirt.

It wasn’t long before we came to a spot in the forest where a good-sized tree had fallen across the road, probably pushed over by an elephant, and it was impossible to go on. The log was fresh and wet and too heavy to move. After surveying the situation, we determined that by moving a few fallen branches to the side of the road and knocking over some of the smaller inch-thick saplings it might be possible to go around the fallen tree through the forest. We did this once and then we did it again, taking a good half-hour every time, and then we came to another tree across the road, this one several feet in diameter, and it looked like it would be impossible to go any further.

We all got out and walked through the forest, looking for some possible access, following the line of least resistance, going deeper and deeper into the woods, which is when we stumbled across a small herd of elephants making their way down the forest path to the meadow. There are three situations in which animals like the elephant are dangerous: when they are with their young, when you surprise them, and when you are between where they are coming from and where they are going.

We’d hit the jackpot.

After dinner, we take a walk to the forest or over to the cliff, or if we are very tired we sit on the veranda and watch night fall over the Lake. There is always life at the Lake, whatever the hour, and in the evening birds in great numbers are usually leaving the water to go to roost. They give the air a constant movement and color. Night comes swiftly and the animal calls increase until we have a tremendous symphony of jungle sound all about us. It throbs through us and we seem to become a part of it. I can feel my heart keeping the beat of it, and its rhythm lulls us to sleep.

Below our veranda is a natural clearing with great brown olive trees standing about. We have named this Paradise Park. Practically all the trees have had their bark rubbed off by elephants. And since they are bare for as high as fifty feet, I suppose that elephants have scratched their backs here for fifty to a hundred years.

–Osa Johnson

There was nothing about Lake Paradise that suggested civilization. We seemed to be in another world, a Garden of Eden, in which it was easy to be good and happy, and in which men and animals lived at peace with one another.

–Martin Johnson

Osa Johnson in front of their house at Lake Paradise.

We were all anxious to see if anything remained of Martin and Osa Johnson’s 1924 camp. According to one book I’d read, they’d set up camp on a low sloping ridge on the southwest of the crater and here they built a small house with a fireplace in the center and a porch overlooking the lake as well as a separate kitchen, storehouse, garage, workshop, guest room, tool house, carpenter house, a building for the generator, an underground vault and, “the skyscraper of the village,” Martin’s film laboratory. Osa had also put in a 4-acre vegetable and flower garden.

She wrote that in the garden she grew “nasturtiums, cosmos, baby’s breath, cannas, carnations and roses. Cannas grew so profusely that I constantly had to thin them out and plant them farther and farther apart. Elephants often trod them down. I even planted canna bulbs out in the forest and there they throve, and I suppose are still thriving.

“I suppose that the winds and the birds have now carried the seeds of my garden throughout the forest, and I hope the crater is abloom with the flowers on which I spent so much care, and with which we left a part of our hearts.”

There was an obvious spot where we all agreed the Johnsons must have built their camp. It was just off the narrow road coming into Lake Paradise, a flat spot, dotted with old brown olive trees, where you had a magnificent view of most of the meadow. And it was on the southwest end of the shore.

Hardy and Fletcher searching for remnants of the Johnson camp. Photo by David Lansing.

We went over there early one morning and tromped around. The dry grass was knee high. Several areas, shaded by trees, looked like they’d been cleared and leveled. But there wasn’t any obvious signs of old foundations or the remnants of a chimney, which is what we were hoping to find. At one point I thought that perhaps we were looking on the wrong side of the road so I crossed over and started wandering off into the forest. I came over a rise and there before me where three elephants on their way to the meadow. I stood still and just looked at them, knowing that Calvin would have a cow if he knew what I was doing but so mesmerized that I didn’t do the logical thing which would have been to slowly back up and retreat.

Back in 1996, Calvin was leading the photographer and writer Peter Beard on a photo safari near his camp in the Mara when they were charged by an elephant. The whole thing was filmed (except when the cameraman dropped the camera and ran for his life) and is a popular video on YouTube. If you’re curious, I’ve included the video at the bottom of this post.

What you realize in looking at that video is how quickly things can go bad when you’re dealing with large animals like elephants. One minute they’re just standing there twitching their ears and the next minute they’re running you down and stomping on your chest. It’s amazing Beard survived the attack.

So I had all that on my mind as I stood there looking at the three cows. Like in the Beard attack, I was on foot and in the open. And, probably like Beard, I didn’t really feel like I was in imminent danger. But I’d seen the video; I knew better. So very, very slowly, while still facing the elephants, I began to back up, first getting off the elephant’s path to the meadow, and then just moving sideways, away from them, into the woods.

When I got back to where the others were still kicking around in the grass, Calvin asked me if I’d seen anything interesting on the other side of the road.

“Just a few elephants,” I said.

“Ah, good,” said Calvin. “Smelly ellies.”

I’m not sure he believed me. But that was fine with me.

Only Calvin's intervention kept me from ending up like this buffalo skull. Photos by David Lansing.

When we got back to the camp it was only 10:30 but I was so tired I felt like we’d just climbed Mt. Kenya. Everybody had thick black mud covering their hiking boots and clothes and we were all dirty and sweaty and anxious for a shower. I asked Kurani to heat some water and when it was ready, he and Keith poured it into a bucket that was tied with a rope to a tree limb. There was a pipe coming out of the bottom of the bucket and a lever attached to that so when you pulled it, water reached a small showerhead. The water was hot—scalding hot—and I thought about getting out of the shower and wrapping a towel around me and going back into camp and asking Kurani to add some cool water to the bucket but it seemed more trouble than it was worth. Instead, I just wet a wash cloth with the scalding water and let it cool off a bit before soaping myself down. This wasn’t the best method for cleaning up but I managed.

Everyone took a shower and then, exhausted, we all disappeared into our tents and collapsed on our cots to take a mid-morning nap. I can’t remember the last time I took a nap before noon but this one was truly necessary. When I woke up about an hour later, I was still aching all over. As soon as I swung my legs off the cot, I started cramping up. First in my thighs and then in my calves and then all over. Even the muscles in the soles of my feet and the short muscles around my ankles started cramping. It was so bad I couldn’t walk. I stood up and tottered out of the tent, afraid I might pass out. It was like I was hooked up to an electrical current and my whole lower body was being shocked and going into spasms. There was nothing to be done but try to walk so I just kept moving, like some sort of Frankenstein creature, through the camp and down towards the meadow. One by one the spasms went away leaving me with legs that felt bruised as if from a car crash.

When I went back to the tent to put some clothes on, I saw that all of our muddy clothes and boots had been washed while we napped. My green khakis and socks were spread out on the fly of my tent and my Italian hiking boots, which I’d assumed had been irretrievably damaged from the mud and ooze, were wet but spotlessly cleaned. Everyone else’s clothes and shoes were drying out in the sun as well.

In my shuka, ready to fight a buffalo.

We sat in the warm sun, half-dressed or, in my case, with just a shuka around my waist, talking over the morning adventure with the buffalos and our trek through the mud, everyone reminding me over and over that I’d been advised not to continue moving into the deep part of the meadow and wondering why I’d kept going and why I hadn’t indicated to anybody why I was stuck.

“Lansing, what were you going to do?” Hardy said. “Just stand there in the mud until the elephants came back?”

It was a good question and one I didn’t really have an answer to. I had gone against everyone’s advice and gotten myself stuck in the mud, like a mastodon in the La Brea tar pits, and once that had happened, I’d decided against calling for help. Maybe it was pride and maybe it was just stupidity but for whatever reason, I got myself stuck and I felt responsible for getting myself out. Except that wasn’t going to happen. Ever. I was in so deep that if Calvin hadn’t decided to come out and rescue me, I’d still be there. And the animals would have come down and finished me off and then my bleached bones would have stayed down in the meadow. Just like those of the buffalo Hardy had found.